Piecing Together Diogenes of Oinoanda

Diogenes was an Epicurean Greek from the 2nd century AD who carved a summary of the philosophy of Epicurus onto a portico wall in the ancient city of Oenoanda in Lycia. The surviving fragments of the wall, which originally extended about 80 meters, 25,000 words long and filled 260 square meters of wall space. Less than a third of it has been recovered.

I was far from Fetiye and the Xanthos in
Lycian Turkey when I first discovered Oinoanda.
In 1972, I was teaching at l’Université de Lille III (Charles de Gaulle)
and directing a mémoire de maîtrise
on the philosophical inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda. Claire Millot and I were studying and
perplexed by New Fragment 7 that Martin Ferguson Smith had published the year
before (in the American Journal of
Archaeology 74 [1971], 365-69), an issue in which he published twelve new
fragments to bring the total of new fragments he had discovered since his
second visit to the site in 1969 to sixteen.
New Fragment 7 comes from the Physics Treatise. Smith first interpreted the text (of two
columns and part of a third) to be a description of cosmogony based on the
physics of Democritus. By the unreliable
luck of a philologist, I had just been reading Plutarch’s tract against
Epicurus’ ethical philosophy with the provocative title, “That According to
Epicurus the Pleasant life is not Even Possible.” There I discovered a quotation from a letter
Epicurus wrote to fellow Epicureans in Lampsakos describing a shipwreck he
barely survived on his way to Lampsakos on the Asiatic coast of the Propontis (Moralia 1090E). I wrote to Martin to report my
discovery. With his characteristic
generosity and enthusiasm for Diogenes and his inscription he embraced the
suggestion that I was soon to publish.

Eventually my discovery of Epicurus’
shipwreck led to my joining the Oinoanda Survey in the summers of 1975 and
1977. Oinoanda is not easy to reach, but
not as difficult as other parts of the Kibyratis described by George Bean in
his Lycian Turkey (London 1978)
170-175. Oinoanda is a mountain city
dominating the high plain (yayla) of
Seki and the sources of the Xanthos River.
In the early summer of 1975, I had been visiting Turkey with my friend
Charles Kahn, and we had come down from Istambul and the Bosporus for a
Presocratic tour of Ionia. At the end of
our Presocratic tour, I left Charles to catch a bus up to Izmir and I took a dolmush (a share taxi, meaning “it is
said to be full”) to Fethiye. The next
day I took the yellow Ali Jet up to Seki where I was greeted by Martin Ferguson
Smith, Alan Hall of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, and the
architectural expert J. J. Coulton, who was to study the buildings and draw up
a plan of the site.

The mountain of ancient Oinoanda is
known locally as Asar Bel, “the ridge with the ruins.” The ascent of the mountain begins at the
small village of Incealiler at the foot of the mountain to the south. It is not a steep climb and takes about
forty-five minutes. The climber has no
sense that he is approaching an ancient city until he encounters the first
limestone joints for the pipes that supplied the city with water carried by an
aquaduct bringing water down to Oinoanda from a lake to the south. The path leads to the impressive and
well-preserved southern walls. Beyond
these lie the agora and a confusion of stone leading to “The Great Wall.” This is a defensive wall to the north of the
city constructed perhaps in the second century A.D. or later. It is fertile with inscriptions from
Diogenes’ stoa, some of which the French had pried out during their campaigns
of 1884, 1885, and 1889. Beyond to the
north is the open space the French called l’Esplanade. It too conceals Diogenes inscriptions, as has
been demonstrated by excavations conducted in 2008 by Martin Smith and Jürgen
Hammerstaedt. Further north is the
theater. Its inscriptions are all
civic. The acropolis on the northern
edge of the city is guarded by the vigilant lions on sarcophagus lids. We would draw up rainwater from the
sarcophagi for our squeezes, being careful to avoid snakes.

As luck would have it, on my first day
at the site I discovered a new fragment on the wall enclosing the Esplanade to
the east. In it Diogenes explained how
hail can form in the summer (New Fragment 82 = Fr. 99 of Smith’s The Epicurean Inscription). This is in fact not a fragment but a
“monolithic maxim.”

At the beginning of our explorations in
the summer of 1975, we and our young surveyors from the North London
Polytechnic Institute camped out in tents at the top of the mountain. We had three site guards. All were armed with shotguns. The fiercest of these was Mehmet. Mehmet and I would hunt for oregano on the mountainside
to season the omelets I would make for my colleagues and the starving
surveyors. Our sylvan life on the
mountain was not to last long. Late one
afternoon a group of four or five armed men arrived at our camp. With Turkish politeness we greeted them hosh geldinez (“you have come as a
pleasure”). The expected reply should
have been hosh bulduk (“we find you as a pleasure”). We did not receive it. We served tea and they sat with their guns
pointed vaguely but significantly in our direction. They were what the Italians would call tombaroli (tomb-robbers). That night
there was gunfire that seemed to be directed towards our tents. This brought our stay on the mountain to an
end. We moved down to Seki where we stayed
in an austere schoolhouse whose only decoration was a large poster
incongruously illustrating every variety of ocean fish. The Mediterranean (or Ak Deniz, White Sea)
was very far from us.

Seki and Incealiler held many
charms. On our way up the mountain we
could sometimes hear the crippled shepherd Sami Bey playing his reed pipe. Then on our way down in the late afternoon
our site guards, Ali and his wife, would offer us ayran (yogurt mixed with cold water), a drink we relished at the
end of a long hot day. Ali’s wife was
the only woman I actually looked at during my two seasons on the mountain above
yayla. The women with their children would work the
fertile plain of Seki with their heads covered.
Sometimes we could sight camels down on the plain, or Ak Dag, the White
Mountain, looming to the east of Seki.
Down on the coast not far south of Fetiye was the Olu Deniz (the Dead
Sea) where we would swim and relax every two weeks. There I came to understand the difference
between the Turks of the Mediterranean and the Turks of the interior.

In 1975, I took a bus up to Smyrna where
I stayed at the Grand Ephesos Hotel.
Before swimming in the hotel’s pool I took a much-needed bath. As I washed I discovered a strange lump in my
left armpit. It was an engorged tick
that I had transported from the mountain.
The pool, comfort, and food of the hotel restored me to civilization,
yet I missed the mountain. I flew up to
Istanbul and from Istanbul to Athens and from Athens to what was then home,
Portland, Oregon. My second return from
Turkey in 1977 (now to Baltimore, Maryland), was more sudden and abrupt. Jim Coulton and I were down in Fetyie where
we picked up a copy of the Jumhuryet
(The Republic). There we found the headline “Ankarada Kolera” (Colera in
Ankara”). We immediately returned to
Seki, picked up our belongings, and hurried to Kushadashi for a boat to take us
to Samos and then to the Peiraeus before the Greek authorities imposed a ban on
travelers coming from Turkey. The
prevalent Imbat (a strong wind from the north, in Greek, the bãthw)
was blasting the sea at 8 Beaufort and the scenes of seasickness were
grisly. I returned to Athens and
America, never to return to Turkey again.
Martin Ferguson Smith still ranges the mountain of Oinoanda with his
daughter and granddaughter, but less often.
He often works in Seki on the plain below.

The count of new fragments discovered by
2010 came to 138; with the publication of the survey results for which the
Austrian Institute in Ankara is now responsible, the total of new finds mounts
to 190. I dedicate these short memoirs
of my two summers in Oinoanda to my colleague Angelo Casanova who in 1984
published his splendid edition of Diogenes, I
Frammenti di Diogene d’Enoanda. He
has never been to Oinoanda, but there is a fine photograph of Martin Ferguson
Smith, Angelo Casanova, and myself taken at the entrance of the archaeological
site of Herculaneum. He now has a print
of it.

A last memory of mountains: On the Olympic peninsula on the
northern shore of in Washington state, there is a nice path that leads to its
western extremity. There I found the
town of Sappho. I did not know then that
I would get to know and write on her poetry or admire her statue on the main square
of the capital of Lesbos. On the Olympic
peninsula I found a poster announcing a dance and assuring us that “Terpsichore
will not be absent.” Sometimes it is
better to take the low road.

That Epicurus was such a prolific writer irked his ancient detractors. Epictetus thought that Epicurus’ efforts to compose and broadcast his texts contradicted his stance on friendship (Discourses2.20.20), and Plutarch claimed that Epicurus’ energetic communications with an array of readers violated the “live unnoticed” precept attributed to him (Moralia 1128). Diogenes of Oinoanda would have caused similar consternation. Faced with human suffering, Diogenes considers it the responsibility of “any good man” (χρηστὸς τις ἀνήρ, fragment 2 II 11-12) to run to the aid of his contemporaries (an intervention he expresses with the pun ἐπικουρεῖν fragment 2 V 7).1 This philosophical rescue effort took place not just among small circles of like-minded friends, but on the walls of a stoa in the thick of things in urban Oinoanda (in southwest Asia Minor, now Turkey). Of all known inscriptions from Greek and Roman antiquity, Diogenes’ is the longest. According to the preface by Hammerstaedt and Smith, this limestone inscription of Roman imperial date (“probably the first half of the second century AD”) “may have occupied about 260 square metres of wall-space and contained about 25,000 words” (p. 1). Oenoanda had a rich epigraphic culture, and it seems highly relevant that Diogenes chose the medium favored by other wealthy elites and public benefactors, particularly in the Greek East.

It is fitting that such a generous, affable, and industrious Epicurean should have the expert support of Hammerstaedt and Smith, who have not only devoted considerable effort to the discovery and preservation of the fragments of Diogenes’ dismantled inscription, but who have also published the new fragments and new readings of rediscovered stones within months of their discovery (along with indispensable commentaries and translations). Smith has been the international leader of work on Diogenes of Oinoanda since 1968, and most of this volume presents the fruitful results of his collaboration with Hammerstaedt, a relative newcomer.

In 2007, a new survey-project in Oinoanda began under the directorship of Martin Bachmann, of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Istanbul. Between 2007 and 2012, 76 new fragments were discovered (some of them quite substantial). The editors are optimistic that more fragments will soon emerge, so this is not yet the time to produce a full, consolidated edition of the inscription. The present volume comprises seven previously published articles that present the Greek texts of these new fragments along with photographs, English translations and commentary, and abstracts in Turkish, all of which appeared in Anatolian Studies or Epigraphica Anatolica. In addition, there is a brief but informative preface, a crucial three-page section aptly titled “Finding and Citing the Latest Edition of a Diogenes Fragment,” a previously published article on the text (in German), and a new 25-page section that prints lists of corrections and additions, the “Theological Physics-sequence” as one continuous text (old and new fragments combined, with translation), and Greek indices of all of the fragments and new readings first published in 2003-2012. This new material will be essential to any scholarship on Diogenes, but even the (uncorrected) reprinted articles are valuable, as many university libraries do not subscribe to the journals. Moreover, Epigraphica Anatolica does not appear in the usual online databases and sometimes passes under the radar of Google Scholar. Here I will mention only a few of the new discoveries, and I will refer to the translations rather than to the Greek text.

New Fragment (henceforth NF) 157 and Hammerstaedt’s and Smith’s commentaries will be relevant to any discussion of Epicurean attitudes toward sexuality. In the new fragment, Diogenes seems to say that lovers (“those who are sick with the passion of love”) are not aware “that they derive pleasure to the highest degree from looking even without copulation” (p. 89). Here Hammerstaedt and Smith disagree about the significance of this text, which Smith takes as a statement of an orthodox position that both Epicurus and Lucretius would affirm. Hammerstaedt—rightly, in my opinion—finds Diogenes’ “positive attitude to the pleasure obtained from looking at an attractive person” (p. 90) at odds with Lucretius’ treatment of the connection between vision and erotic desire (Lucr. 4.1937- 1287). The inclusion of Hammerstaedt’s and Smith’s divergent views here will benefit future scholarly debate.

Refuting the notion of divine providence in NF 182, Diogenes refers to thunder, hail, violent winds, and other phenomena (including nighttime) that he pronounces “useless” or “even harmful” (p. 118). Hammerstaedt and Smith note incidentally that a violent storm that damaged the local apple crop coincided with the chance discovery of NF 182. Thus Diogenes’ interest in storms “would have seemed highly appropriate” to the inhabitants of his mountainous region (p. 118).

Also of particular importance is NF 186, which adds a small but significant piece of evidence for the existence of female students of Epicurean philosophy. This fragment “may or may not belong to Letter to Menneas,” one of the “Ten-Line-Column Writings” that may have been in the central course of the apparently seven-course inscription (p.129). Almost an entire column of NF 186 is well preserved, and one feminine pronoun and one feminine participle are clearly legible. Hammerstaedt and Smith translate: “… [I shall help them (?)] [in every] way, when I can. As you know, we do not have better things to offer them (N.B. ‘them’ is feminine) than our own good fare. For indeed they happen already to have done some tasting of the doctrines of Epicurus, but to be sure not in such a way that [the disturbances] that strike [them have been removed]” (p. 130). The commentary suggests plausibly that the addressee is “an Epicurean or Epicurean sympathizer” and that “our own good fare” may refer to Epicurean philosophy (p. 130). Sadly, the next column is too damaged to read more than a few characters. Perhaps future discoveries will reveal whether these women belonged to some sort of circle of seekers or students, or if they were simply two or more acquaintances or correspondents.

In NF 192, addressing “Zeno and Cleanthes, and you, Chrysippus,” Diogenes asserts that the Epicurean telos is not the pleasures of “the masses,” as the Stoics claim, but is like the Stoic telos, though the Stoics “hate the name of pleasure” (p. 153). Diogenes’ naming of Chrysippus, who is not mentioned in other fragments, will be of interest to scholars who think that Epicureanism continued to develop after the lifetime of Epicurus. Chrysippus (born c. 280 BCE) was only a boy when Epicurus died in 270 BCE.

This leads me to one aspect of the fine work of Hammerstaedt and Smith that is not to my taste, though it may bother only a minority of other scholars. I would have liked to see in the commentaries more attention to Diogenes’ particular context in the Epicurean tradition. While acknowledging that later Epicureans seem to have been eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the teachings of Epicurus or, more generally, to the teachings of “The Men” (Epicurus, Hermarchus, Metrodorus, and Polyaenus), I agree with Snyder that Epicurean texts were “not simply a static body of documents to be restored, but a sinuous, evolving entity.”2 Philodemus’ allegiance seems to be to “The Men,” but so far it appears that Diogenes saw himself as a follower solely of Epicurus, whom he mentions eight times in the known fragments if we count one certain and one uncertain reference to “son of Neocles” (the fragment numbers are listed on p. 131). And yet, Diogenes does not deliver wisdom straight from the books of Epicurus, as his inimitable voice and aspects such as his reference to Chrysippus make clear.

But Smith’s approach to these fragmentary texts often involves filling in lacunae with words imported from the texts of Epicurus, though Hammerstaedt and Smith do take care to remind readers that Smith’s restorations are merely suggestions. For example, in the notes on NF 156, they write: “S.’s restoration of the whole maxim…is closely based on the passages in which Epicurus (especially Hdt. 49-50) and Diogenes (especially fr. 9, 43) describe how the images cause vision, thought, and dreams, but of course he does not claim to show how the text went, only how it might have gone” (p. 59). Sometimes the editors have found that “how it might have gone” was clearly not how it went. NF 157 was discovered in 2008 (published expeditiously in 2008), but the full text on the stone was not uncovered until the following season (and then published in 2009). For the 2008 publication, Smith presented restorations and a translation of the text as it had so far been revealed (p. 60). But when the rest of the stone was uncovered a year later, Hammerstaedt and Smith discovered that half of that restored text and most of the translation were incorrect, as the full photograph, text, and translation demonstrate (p. 89). To their credit, Hammerstaedt and Smith call attention to the hazards of restoration by issuing “a mild ‘health warning’” (p. 3) and a list of updates (p. 5) for readers who would otherwise be unaware that a proposed restoration has become untenable.

This book will be essential for scholars and fans of Diogenes of Oinoanda, and the wealth of detail it contains about the extensive recovery, recording, and preservation efforts should make any reader optimistic that Diogenes has even more to tell us.

Table of Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Finding and Citing the Latest Edition of a Diogenes Fragment

New Fragments (NF) 136-212, and Some Additions to “Old” Fragments

1. MFS, In praise of the simple life: a new fragment of Diogenes of Oinoanda [=Anatolian studies54 (2004) 35-46]

1. For the text of this and other fragments discovered before 1993 (through NF 124), see Martin Ferguson Smith, Diogenes of Oinoanda. The Epicurean Inscription, La scuola di Epicuro, Supplemento 1, Naples, Bibliopolis, 1993. Fragments discovered after that publication (through NF135) can be found in Martin Ferguson Smith, Supplement to Diogenes of Oinoanda, The Epicurean Inscription, La scuola di Epicuro, Supplemento 3, Naples, Bibliopolis, 1993. The publication under review here includes corrections to those editions.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

These two pieces constitute related parts of the texts and the stones were in excellent condition (except for some obscuring of the text) when Kalinka wrote them up. Unlike fragments 7 & 8 these two do not overlap in their placement.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

It is probably useful to put Oenoanda in context first. It was a hilltop city that was very outside the Roman model, moreover it also was not on any major routes so thus "not on the way to anywhere else". Therefore the city had to rely on its own very small hinterland for its economic prosperity. In this respect its closest parallel in modern times is the Italian hill towns of Tuscany.

Some versions have it that the town takes it name form the Greek word for wine. Certainly the area has not been known for its wine or grape growing for a very long time. However, in a recent report the Hurriyet newspaper reported a reactivation of wine growing at Arycanda, citing evidence of "wine houses" in the region of Oenoanda and claiming that wine in the world had been first grown in the region 4,000 years ago. Just east of the Esplanade in the upper part of the city, archaeologists have identified what they have termed a screw-press (constructed from spolia) for wine production that dates from a late stage of the city's history, the size of which has been deemed worthy of being shown on maps of the area. We can therefore presume that wine and probably olive growing were also profitable economic activities in the area. Though what the surplus for export might have been is unfathomable. We might regard the city's "territory" as being the valleys on either side of its mountain eyrie. An inscription relating to the establishment of the Demosthenaia festival notes that there were 35 villages within the territory of Oenoanda. The evidence also suggests that there was summer pasture under the city's control that was a source for sacrificial animals and presumably herds as a food source. The map below shows the town and the valleys around. Kemerarasi was known as Termessos Minor in ancient times.

What was grown in these valleys in ancient times remains a mystery but a clue may be the ransom that the Romans demanded of the Cabalian League which consisted of 10,000 medimni of wheat. According to A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. William Smith, LLD. William Wayte. G. E. Marindin. Albemarle Street, London. John Murray. 1890. an Attic medimnus consisted of 12 imperial gallons (11.556 gallons) or 1 1/2 bushel, though there were different versions that were less. However, for the region to have such a large surplus (hopefully) of wheat to make the payment, this must have been a crop of importance in the valleys of the region. Pliny commented upon the cedars of the region, but did not comment as to whether they were cut and traded or not. The nature of industries in the city is also unknown at this stage as little effort has gone into exploring the "suburban" parts of the ruined city. In the book The Politics of Munificence in the Roman Empire: Citizens, Elites and and Benefactors in Asia Minor by Arjan Zuiderhoek, Cambridge University Press, 2009, it is mentioned that the Demosthenaia festival involved a suspension of tolls and levies with the goal being that during the duration of the festival traders from other areas would come and negotiate their business in the city. A sort of temporary "free-trade zone" to boost the local economy and ensure that the festival goers had a sufficient supply of foods and consumer goods. The author speculates that this might imply that tariffs on trading were high enough or trading good enough in normal times that the city could offer this dispensation at special times. Another interesting document is a treaty agreed between the citizens of the nearby city of Tlos and the Termessians. As has been mentioned elsewhere the Termessians may actually be the citizenry of Oenoanda with the city and territory having a different name to the inhabitants. In any case, in the article Une convention entre cités en Lycie du Nord, In: Comptes-rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 140e année, N. 3, 1996. pp. 961-980 bu Christian Le Roy the author discusses the rights the Tlosians allowed to the Termessians. Amongst these was the cutting of wood from their territory (though whether this was firewood or wood for construction/furniture etc has not been established) and rights of pasturage, which is seemingly summer grazing. The author also makes reference to the floating of logs down the Xanthos river from the region of Tlos and Oenoanda to the sea. For the forestry resources of the zone he cites Revue de Géographie alpine 47, 1959, p. 373-385: "les oliviers ne dépassent pas les 900 m ; Puis, on a les pins rouges, jusque vers 1000 m ; les pins noirs et les chênes vers 1 300 m ; les cèdres et genévriers jusque vers 1800 m au sud et 2100 m au nord. Pour le pourtour du massif étudié (audessus de la baie de Fethiye et de la plaine de Nif), l'auteur emploie l'expression de « grande sylve lycienne » (p. 378). Encore fait-il à bon droit observer que * ces hauteurs sont et ont été occupées aux limites de leurs possibilités » et que cette « surcharge pastorale » explique « la dévastation absolue de la forêt au-dessus de 1800 m et sa réduction à quelques taches au-dessus de 1550 m ». La couverture sylvestre devait être beaucoup plus dense dans l'Antiquité".Thus we might be so daring as to suggest that the known economic activities of Oenoanda might have been trading in general, wood, wheat, wine, olives, animal husbandry. From this might also come woodworking, wool processing and some other as yet unknown manufacturing and value added activities linked to the raw materials it had at its disposal in the zone.

Friday, March 11, 2016

In the Spring of 2010, when the Turkish authorities finally gave permission
for the erection of a storehouse had been granted, the archaeologists launched an international appeal for
funds. The appeal quickly received an extremely generous response.

By far the largest contribution
was made by The Gilbert de Botton Memorial Foundation, a cultural fund established
under the will of Gilbert de Botton (1935–2000). One of those who administer the fund is his
son, the writer and philosopher Alain de Botton. Immense gratitude is owed to him for making
possible an extraordinary gift.

Gratitude is due to all these institutions
and individuals, as well as to numerous friends of Jurgen Hammerstaedt, academic and non-academic, who made
gifts to the Oinoanda project on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday.

It might be useful to put the "city" of Oenoanda is some sort of political context. Essentially it was a large town, though I am sure it regarded itself as a small city and it did have many of the trappings of a major population centre despite its limited population.What was its political status though?The Tetrapolis

The political arrangement of Oenoanda prior to 81 BC was that it, and the cities of Balbura, Bubon and Cibyra, belonged to a political alliance known variably as the Tetrapolis, the Cibyratis, or Cabalian League. It was dominated by the city of Cibyra (Kibyra), which formed a league approximately contemporaneously with the Lycian League, to the south. The main ancient sources on the subject are Polybius and Strabo. Cibyra ruled the Turkish Lakes Region. It was called Cibyra Megale, "Greater Cibyra," to distinguish it from Cibyra Mikra or "Little Cibyra" (today near Okurcalar) near Side. The lakes region is a string of alpine valleys in the folds of the Taurus Mountains, which have no natural exits. Instead they have collected lakes. Cibyra was on a low hill to the west of Gölhisar Valley and Gölhisar Lake, just north of Gölhisar.

Cibyra dominated an ancient region, Cabalis, which was divided between the later states of Lycia, Pisidia and Lydia, subsequently incorporated in Phrygia. According to Strabo, it spoke four languages, Lydian, even though Lydian had disappeared elsewhere, Greek, Pisidian and "that of the Solymi." Cabalis, which was later divided into Lycian and Asian Cabalis, was the putative home of the Solymi. It included the Milyas District of Lycia, putatively the home of the first Lycians. It is possible that they spoke a form of Anatolian earlier than the attested Lycian, which some have dubbed "Milyan." Also according to Strabo the Cabalian grouping operated on the basis of each of the cities having one vote with the exception of Cibyra that had two votes.

The Cibyratis was ruled by a succession of deliberately ostentatious and high-handed tyrants. Having become a thorn in the side of Rome, they attracted the attention of Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, commander of the Roman armies successfully fighting the Galatian War of 189 BC. Manlius turned toward Cibyratis with the intent of removing the thorn. The tyrant, Moa'getes, barely escaped with his life and his position by entering the Roman camp dressed in humble clothing, with a handful of similarly dressed assistants, claiming destitution and begging for mercy. He offered a payment of 15 talents. Manlius set the payment at 500 talents, a huge sum, impossible of payment. Finally moved to mercy, he allowed Moa'getes to bargain him down to 100 and 10,000 medimni of wheat, necessary to the Roman commissary.

When the Romans had departed Moa'getes dropped the pretense, and Cibyratis resumed its arrogance. Consequently, when Lucius Licinius Murena (elder) did finally deal with Cibyratis, he had no political mercy.Strabo says that Bubon and Balbura were transferred to the Lycian League forthwith. He does not mention Oenoanda, but it had been a city of the Lycians anyway. It minted coinage of the League subsequently. There is no evidence that Cibyra was ever admitted to the League, although that assumption sometimes is made. It was in Asian Cabalia and as such was joined to Phrygia later, an event supported by their coin issues. The last tyrant of the Tetrapolis was also named Moa'getes, a different one, unless the term was a title, or Strabo made a mistake.After the dismemberment of the Cibryatis alliance, Oenoanda was grafted onto the Lycian League. Whethre this involved a loss of relative status was unclear, as it went from being a large city in a small grouping to being yet another city in a much more substantial grouping where it was "outvoted" by cities such as Xanthos. The Lycian LeagueThe Lycian League (Lukiakou systema in Strabo's Greek transliterated, a "standing together") is first known from two inscriptions of the early 2nd century BC in which it honors two citizens. Bryce hypothesizes that it was formed as an agent to convince Rome to rescind the annexation of Lycia to Rhodes. Lycia had been under Rhodian control since the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC.

In 168 BC, Rome took Lycia away from Rhodes and turned over home rule to the League. There was no question of independence. Lycia was not to be sovereign, only self-governing under republican principles. It could neither negotiate with foreign powers nor disobey the Roman Senate. It was not independent. It could govern its own people and for a time mint its own coins as a right granted by Rome. It did not determine its own borders. Land and people could be assigned or taken away by the Senate. Remarking on this protectorate Strabo says of the government:

"Formerly they deliberated about war and peace, and alliances, but this is not now permitted, as these things are under the control of the Romans. It is only done by their consent, or when it may be for their own advantage."

Exactly what such a statement might imply is uncertain. Lycia had not been a sovereign state for some time. Whether the Lycian League as such is meant, implying that it existed anciently, or some other similar government is meant, is not clear. The statement does not say also whether there was a gap between the former sovereign state and the new Lycian League, or whether they are to be conceived as chronologically continuous.

According to Strabo, the league (prior to 81 BC) was comprised of some 23 known city-states as members. It was a federal-style government that shared political and economic resources. A “Lyciarch” was elected by a senate (συνέδριον, synedrion, "sitting together") that convened by agreement beforehand at "what city they please." Each member had one, two or three votes (presumably by different representatives), depending on the city's size. The decline of some cities over time caused them to join with the major state in their vicinity to form a sympolity. In that case they lost their vote (if they had one) assuming an influence in the vote of the major city. After election of the Lyciarch the Senate voted for the other public officials and the magistrates. The League's government took precedence, but, as in many federal systems, the issue was not entirely settled, and the resulting civil conflict led to the dissolution of the union.

Strabo identified the major cities of the League; that is, the three-vote cities, as Xanthos, Patara, Pinara, Olympos, Myra, and Tlos, with Patara as the capital. The full complement has been identified by a study of the coins and mention in other texts.As mentioned earlier the Roman consul, Lucius Licinius Murena (elder) in 81 BC grafted the cities of Balbura, Bubon and Oenoanda onto the league, having stripped from the Cabalian systema to the north.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Repeated over and over again through the decades since the 1970s has been a litany of not so veiled comments from archaeologists and epigraphers over the obstructionist attitude of the Turkish authorities when it comes to the issue of excavation at Oenoanda.

As a result of the torpor vital pieces of the Inscription have been left at the mercy of looters and the elements when they could have excavated, recorded and preserved.

Over the period in question there has not been a shortage of esteemed parties (mostly notably the British Institute in Ankara and the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut in Istanbul) interested in working with Turkish archaeologists on the site with regard to both the Inscription and investigation of the other structures. Cooperation from the Turkish authorities has been minimal and sporadic.

Recent years saw the establishment of the program to finally rescue the pieces from the site and rehouse them in a shed down in the valley. This was massively overdue. Even as it was happening there was still prohibition upon lifting some of the stones if they were perceived to be buried or fixed into other structures. What is all this obstructionism about? We can only presume that it is some form of internal power struggle amongst the Turks because everywhere else in Turkey foreign university and research teams are working very happily and productively with their Turkish colleagues. It is unfathomable as to why Oenoanda has been allowed to wallow, when teams are willing and able to fund and help move forward knowledge of the site and preservation of the stones.

It is clear that several things should be prioritised at the site and the investigators have constantly bemoaned the situation to little effect.

Firstly vegetation clearance should be a high priority. This may not be the Mexican jungle but the forest on the site is severely damaging the ruins and makes the exploratory task that much more difficult. Investigators have signalled for decades that roots and branches are undermining and damaging several of the remaining structures and yet nothing is ever done, when local villagers with a chainsaw could solve the problem in the space of two weeks. No-one is talking of denuding the site but certainly there are several score trees and bushes that should be removed from the site to facilitate work and reduce the damage they cause.

Secondly, some elementary site clearance should be undertaken with the focus being on increasing the knowledge of some structures and hopefully precipitating their conversation and partial restoration. The presumed gymnasion at Mk1 has long been a perfect target that has been off-limits to any excavation (except by illegal diggers). Due to its close proximity to the Inscription Stoa it is not beyond the realms of imagination that the courtyard may contain further pieces. The arcade is in danger of collapse from sprouting foliage and the inside of the structure (which is sometimes speculated as being a baths) is filled with rubble from collapsed vault roofing that again the authorities will not allow work to be done on. The dedicatory inscription from the facade is only known in parts and no work is permitted to search for the other pieces.

Thirdly the theatre is a disgrace. Again it has a very large tree growing in the orchestra while the stage is a tumble of debris on which no work is undertaken. The seating is partly buried in scree that would be relatively easy to excavate, sift and remove and yet nothing happens.

Fourthly, the late wall needs to be dismantled and the pieces of the Inscription still embedded in it need to be liberated.

Fifthly, I get a queasy feeling about the fate of the Inscription. Moving it to storage in the valley, was long overdue. What needs to happen is a restoration of the stoa and installation of the Inscription on site. The Stoa of Attalos (pictured below) rebuilt by the American School in Athens in a good example that sympathetic recreation of ancient structures from scratch can be done.

Though the single-storey Stoa Poikile (which stood in the Agora in Athens), a reconstruction of which looks like this (below) was probably more like what Diogenes used to protect his Inscription.

I get the feeling we may find one day that the Inscription is whisked away to the museum in Fethiye "for preservation" never to be seen in its original context ever again.

Quite literally the Turkish authorities have been putting "stones on the road" to block work at Oenoanda. The situation has become slightly better with the rescue of the obvious pieces of the Inscription lying around, but the effort needs to be greater.